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Born in Kansas, Keith Waldrop served in the United States military and in 1954, he met his wife, the poet and translator Rosmarie Waldrop while stationed in Kitzingen, Germany. He studied at Aix-Marseille and Michigan Universities, earning a PhD in comparative literature in 1964. His first book of poetry, A Windmill Near Calvary (University of Michigan, 1968), was nominated for a National Book Award.

He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, most recently Several Gravities (Siglio, 2009), a collection of collages; Transcendental Studies (University of California Press, 2009), a trilogy of collage poems which won the National Book Award for Poetry; and a translation of Charles Baudelaire's Paris Spleen (Wesleyan, 2009). His other work includes The Real Subject: Queries and Conjectures of Jacob Delafon: With Sample Poems (Omnidawn, 2004). His other collections of poetry include The House Seen from Nowhere (2003), Haunt (2000), Well Well Reality (1998, with Rosmarie Waldrop), and the trilogy The Locality Principle (1995), The Silhouette of the Bridge, which won the Americas Award for Poetry (1997), and Semiramis, If I Remember (2001).

He has translated several contemporary French poets, such as Anne-Marie Albiach, Claude Royet-Journoud, Dominique Fourcade, Jean Grosjean, and Paol Keineg. In 2006, he completed a translation of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal (Wesleyen University Press).

According to Waldrop, collage is a major mode of composition for him. He explains the process as: "a way to explore, not necessarily the thing I am tearing up, but the thing I am contriving to build out of torn pieces. To the extent that there is a purpose to what I do, its end is the 'enjoyment of a composition'—a concern, as A. N. Whitehead notes, common to aesthetics and logic."

About his work, the poet Michael Palmer has said, "As we would expect from Keith Waldrop, it is suffused with a particular humanity and an appreciation for the absurd, even the grotesque, in daily life. The rhythmic apposition of prose and poetry brings to mind the freedom, alertness and quality of distillation in Basho's classic travel sketches. With his quietly precise sense of modulation and his unerring gaze, Waldrop remains one of the vital and requisite, semi-secret presences in American letters."

Waldrop has received an award from the Fund for Poetry, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Berlin Artists Program of the DAAD. In 2000, he received a Medal from the French government with rank of Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters, for lifetime contribution to French literature.

He currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where he teaches at Brown University, and has served as co-editor of Burning Deck Press, with his wife Rosmarie Waldrop since 1968.

Light Travels

Keith Waldrop

1
common time I follow you un-
kept secret on
a basic undersound
2
common time I follow you un-
kept secret on
a basic undersound
this is the first part of the rhyme
allow for sequences of overheard
3
this is the first part of the rhyme
allow for sequences of overheard
close the curtains but
playful elaborations of other-
wise arrogant variations keeping
the window open
4
close the curtains but
playful elaborations of otherwise
arrogant variation keeping
the window open
as it's wrong to shut
one's eyes to dream
it's raining while it is in fact raining
5
as it's wrong to shut
one's eyes to dream it's
raining while it is in fact raining
ears busied with hearing more than
one voice the stream our tears unmirror
6
ears busied with hearing more than
one voice the stream our tears unmirror
or mere error as if
naturally hard of
divided
noise rings in our fears
7
or mere error as if
naturally hard of
divided
noise rings in our fears
expands danger within our
long thin hands contract
across quiet gravel
8
expands danger within our
long thin hands contract
across quiet gravel
narrow fruit tin cans
loss of the white of other eyes
9
narrow fruit tin cans
loss of the white of other eyes
song out of mind
10
song out of mind
or am I
tethered
so blind a coloring of thought
11
or am I
tethered so
blind a coloring of thought
intrinsically fuzzy the sound as
pavement
12
intrinsically fuzzy the sound as
pavement
whereas tenses
are
a later
development
13
whereas tenses
are
a later
development
limits of a body open
sea the great sea
journey
14
limits of a body open
sea the great sea
journey
how different the grammars of
to think or swim
15
how different the grammars of
to think or swim
reminiscence and extinction

Keith Waldrop

by this poet

things
forgotten
I could
burn in hell forever
set the glass
down, our
emotion's moment
eyes vs sunlight
how removed
here, from
here
towards the unfamiliar and
frankincense forests
against the discerning light
everybody
sudden
frightful indeed, the sound of
traffic and
no appetite
the

My ﬁrst glance takes in
an army, tens of thousands ready
armed. As a mirror reﬂects
indistinctly and with a feeble
light, so it cracks and
soon fades. From its surface a clear
image of the beholder.
In these paintings: harbors, promontories,
shores, rivers, fountains,
fanes, groves, mountains, ﬂocks,

Do not alarm yourself, I
could not rest content with
moral lectures and continual
repetition
like the solar system, I
could not hold my head up, made
endlessly to
glow
destined for grand ceremonies, I
was much affected by finding myself so
thin and so worn
down
(we use theory
to mean it is possible to